Daily driving a cheap Porsche 911 (996) - what could possibly go wrong?

Figured I'll update this thread again, although there hasn't been much to report.

Recently had the dubious pleasure of driving it through a few snow storms and I'm still amazed how well it copes with that sort of weather. This time I'm keeping a close eye on the tire wear though, don't want to be caught out by worn snows again.

Other than an aftermarket oil pan drain plug that didn't survive four oil changes and had to replaced with an OEM one, it just keeps ticking along. And finally, after over 21000 miles in my ownership, the running cost has fallen below $1/mile after today's service. That includes the motor refresh and all other work, but not the initial purchase price.

Thanks for the update. Cheers on the 21k miles covered!

Tim you are (IIRC) roughly my height? If I am remembering correctly I strongly recommend the GT3 centre console delete - it's made my car an order of magnitude more comfortable as my clutch-leg no longer wants to be in the same place as said centre console:

Except the steering wheel is on the other side here, hence the console is up against the throttle, not the clutch

BoxheadTim wrote: And finally, after over 21000 miles in my ownership, the running cost has fallen below $1/mile after today's service. That includes the motor refresh and all other work, but not the initial purchase price.

I was all excited thinking I was ahead of your $1/mile cost when I remembered that my expensive German experiment is still disassembled. I still am below $1/mile, but it's probably not a fair comparison yet.

Thank you for being honest about all of this. It's eyeopening to see how wrong things can go.

In reply to docwyte:

Potato/Potato, but yes, it would be gas-pedal leg in the US of A.

Dammit wrote: Tim you are (IIRC) roughly my height? If I am remembering correctly I strongly recommend the GT3 centre console delete - it's made my car an order of magnitude more comfortable as my clutch-leg no longer wants to be in the same place as said centre console:

It's a much more attractive option than the CD magazine that comes by default.

I dont understand why but there could be any number of things in that space from tape holder to cd holder to stereo to HVAC controls, iirc. I dont know why they made them all modular and put them in all those different places. Mine just has two empty cubbies, but i find them useful and dont have any leg problems in mine.

I had a cassette-tape holder and a cubby into which I could put my phone and my wallet, the loss of which I in no way lament due to now being able to feel my left leg from calf-down after driving the car for half an hour.

In reply to Dammit:

I'm 1.80m (5'11" in old money) and I'm pretty comfortable in the car as is. Plus, mine has the optional Nav so I can't just take out the lower part of the centre console as the heater controls are in there.

Having a cubby hole for the wallet etc would actually be nice, right now there is hardly any interior storage in the car. Basically the two door pockets and the small cubby hole in the centre console.

Ah, I'm 1.87.

I got a Becker Cascade Pro which seems to be the last-hurrah of the single-DIN head-unit, OEM on a variety of Ferrari/Maserati/Aston before they all went to bespoke units, it allows me to have the environmental controls and the nav in the upper unit, to which I also banished all switch-gear (evicting the heated seat buttons from the lower console unit):

To get back a bit of oddment space I fitted the ashtray-delete unit which gives you a pretty useful tray in place of the (up until this point unused) ashtray, ideal for sticking a phone in.

In reply to Dammit:

Off topic but has anyone ever confused you with Jesus Christ? (bonus points for those that know the reference)

Time to update the thread again. Looks like another two steps forward, one step back deal. I needed to put in a new air filter, plus I really wanted to change out the washer nozzles for the headlamp washers. While I was at it I also got a front plate mounting kit - NV is a state that normally requires a front plate, but usually you don't get into trouble if you don't have a plate mount. However, occasionally missing front plates are used as a reason to pull people over. Anyway, we have a small pile of parts, bargain at only ~$420:

The washer nozzles are $180 apiece at Pelican if you were wondering about the price tag.

The nozzles are notorious failure points because the jets tend to blow out after a while, leaving the whole thing look like this:

So you unlock the headlight with the official 996 headlight unlocking tool:

Pull the whole thing out and end up with this:

The driver's side nozzle clips on the supply tube, a bit fiddly to remove but not a big deal:

Passenger side needed a bit of heat to get the tube off, again, not a big deal:

Driver's side went well, we now have jets again:

Unfortunately the whole car currently looks like this - while mounting the passenger side headlight is not a big issue, it turns out that it doesn't want to plug into the wiring correctly. The Litronic have two connectors at the back. One "regular" one that you just connect/disconnect manually and one that the light unit connects to by itself as you slide it home.

The problem is that someone's been in there before and the connector itself is loose. It's clamped into a (plastic, of course...) upright and held in place by a yellow clip, but before the clip is, err, clipped home, the connector is supposed to be hooked into its mount at the top. Well, mine isn't and I can't get the yellow clip to disengage to fix it. Unfortunately that means the connector on the light doesn't engage properly and I have no passenger side headlight. Ah well, at least I found the reason for the occasional intermittent headlight:

I ended up asking over on Rennlist if anybody has any tips on removing the yellow clip - it feels like it's locked into place and I need to find the right area to depress to unlock it, but I can't see enough even with a mirror to figure out how to do this. I hope someone knows, otherwise I'll have to take it to my Porsche mechanic in its current one-eyed glory and see if they can fix it.

Of course, that's exactly why I'm not super keen on working on my DDs and prefer to just wrench on my projects.

At least the air filter change went almost without a hitch, other than the snorkel on the left being held in mostly by luck and the engine lid:

The mounting holes in the bottom half of the airbox are damaged so it just flops about. As stuff like this tends to annoy me I'll try to bag a good used airbox on ebay and switch it out.

Also looked like I got my money's worth out of the air filter:

BoxheadTim wrote: The problem is that someone's been in there before and the connector itself is loose. It's clamped into a (plastic, of course...) upright and held in place by a yellow clip, but before the clip is, err, clipped home, the connector is supposed to be hooked into its mount at the top. Well, mine isn't and I can't get the yellow clip to disengage to fix it. Unfortunately that means the connector on the light doesn't engage properly and I have no passenger side headlight. Ah well, at least I found the reason for the occasional intermittent headlight:

Ahh. Mine right one is broken in the same way, the plug won't seat on the light properly. It has been a few year since I took it out, but if I recall right what I did was pop out the side marker and poke my giant 500 cm screwdriver through the hole to hold the plug in the crappy mounting flange while I ram the headlight assembly home. It got the job done and I promptly forgot all about it until now, so maybe I'll look into getting another clip or whatever has broken and fix it up proper someday...

In reply to efahl:

That might be worth trying, but it'll probably get me back to the occasionally intermittent headlight. I'm still hoping I'd be able to unclip the connector and hook it in properly...

And here we have the clip of maximum annoyance:

Apparently it should be a matter of just pulling it up(?) and out, but nobody told the clip that. I can't find an obvious locking mechanism and pulling it down results in essentially no movement at all.

Are those teeth on the black piece that hold the yellow clip in place?

Here's a pic of the clip by itself if it helps you work out how it connects. Looks like you would pry the bottom a bit past the teeth and pull down?

Thanks oldtin, that helped a lot. I got the clip off!

The "trick" was to push the blue connector downwards. It would move a tiny bit and unlock the retaining clip. Then it's easy to remove the retaining clip.

Unfortunately it turned out that the body of the blue connector has had some damage and that's why it's loose in the bracket even with the clip in place. At least it looks like it's possible to get a replacement connector housing as long as I can find either the tool to do the repinning or find someone to do it.

BoxheadTim wrote: At least it looks like it's possible to get a replacement connector housing as long as I can find either the tool to do the repinning or find someone to do it.

I use a Jeweler's screwdriver or a paperclip flattened with a hammer to release the pins in connectors.

Hal wrote:

BoxheadTim wrote: At least it looks like it's possible to get a replacement connector housing as long as I can find either the tool to do the repinning or find someone to do it.

I use a Jeweler's screwdriver...

X2

remind me to avoid this option when I buy my next 911.

All 996s have this connector system in one form or another, unfortunately.

Anyway, a visit to the local Porsche specialist and a lot of fiddling (and presumably swearing) resulted in my wallet being rather lighter than I'd like but I have a working headlight again.

What parts did you end up springing for at the dealer? Just the blue connector or more?

No parts so far - I just had the Porsche specialist "make it work somehow". Didn't have time to deal with getting parts or anything as I really only could let them have the car for a few hours on Monday.

My understanding is that after they confirmed that it was only the blue connector that was busted, they went in through the wheel well and "manually" made the existing connector connect as best as it would.